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54-580: The Tristia ("Sad things" or "Sorrows") is a collection of poems written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during the first three years following his banishment from Rome to Tomis on the Black Sea in AD 8. Despite five books in which he bewails his fate copiously, the immediate cause of Augustus ' banishment of the most acclaimed living Latin poet to Pontus remains a mystery. In addition to

108-433: A dactylic pentameter line. This form of verse was used for love poetry by Propertius , Tibullus , and Ovid , for Ovid's letters from exile, and for many of the epigrams of Martial . Ancient Greek and Latin poetry is made up of long and short syllables arranged in various patterns. In Greek, a long syllable is συλλαβὴ μακρά ( sullabḕ makrá ) and a short syllable is συλλαβὴ βραχεῖα ( sullabḕ brakheîa ). In Latin

162-445: A double-reed wind instrument . Archilochus expanded use of the form to treat other themes, such as war, travel, and homespun philosophy. Between Archilochus and other imitators, the verse form became a common poetic vehicle for conveying any strong emotion. At the end of the 7th century BCE, Mimnermus of Colophon struck on the innovation of using the verse for erotic poetry. He composed several elegies celebrating his love for

216-571: A caesura: lines ending in a one-syllable word or in words of more than three syllables: or even lines starting with two short syllables: However, most of these features were abandoned by later writers or used only occasionally for special effect. Later Republican writers, such as Lucretius , Catullus , and even Cicero , wrote hexameter compositions, and it was at this time that the principles of Latin hexameter were firmly established and followed by later writers such as Virgil , Horace , Ovid , Lucan , and Juvenal . Virgil 's opening line for

270-437: A circle under Tibullus' patron Messalla . Notable in this collection are the poems of Sulpicia , thought to be the only surviving work by a Classical Latin female poet. The six elegiac poems of Lygdamus in the collection are thought by some to be an anonymous early work by Ovid, though other scholars attribute them to an imitator of Ovid who may have lived in a much later period. Through these poets—and in comparison with

324-435: A direct translation of Callimachus' Lock of Berenice . His 85th poem is famous: Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask? I know not, but I feel it happen and am tormented. To read it correctly it is necessary to take account of the three elisions : Cornelius Gallus , an important statesman of this period,

378-411: A feminine or weak caesura, such as the following, there is inevitably a coincidence of meter and accent in the 3rd foot: To offset this, whenever there was a feminine caesura in the 3rd foot, there was usually also a masculine caesura in the 2nd and 4th feet, to ensure that in those feet at least, the word accent and meter did not coincide. By the age of Augustus , poets like Virgil closely followed

432-439: A following 4th-foot caesura ensures that all the last four feet have word accent at the beginning, which is unusual. The monotonous effect is reinforced by the assonance of dent ... dent and the alliteration of S ... S: Dactyls are associated with sleep again in the following unusual line, which describes the activity of a priestess who is feeding a magic serpent ( Aen. 4.486). In this line, there are five dactyls, and every one

486-473: A long or two shorts): Here, "|" (pipe symbol) marks the beginning of a foot in the line. Thus there are six feet, each of which is either a dactyl (– u u) or a spondee (– –). The first four feet can either be dactyls, spondees, or a mix. The fifth foot can also sometimes be a spondee, but this is rare, as it most often is a dactyl. The last foot is a spondee. The hexameter is traditionally associated with classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin and

540-542: A single poem. Taking this division into account, book 1 has 13 poems, book 3 has 15, book 4 has 11, book 5 has 16. Book 2, as noted above, is one single poem. Peter Green wrote in a translation of Ovid's exile poems that the Tristia "[has] not, on the whole, had a good press from posterity." Gordon Williams referred to the work as "mostly a pale reflection of the genius that he had been." However, Ralph J. Hexter wrote in 1995 that literary critics were then "beginning to give

594-410: A syllable like et is said to be long by position. There are some exceptions to the above rules, however. For example, tr , cr , pr , gr , and pl (and other combinations of a consonant with r or l ) can count as a single consonant, so that the word patrem could be pronounced either pa-trem with the first syllable short or pat-rem with the first syllable long. Also the letter h

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648-437: A war theme, apparently for a Spartan audience. Theognis of Megara vented himself in couplets as an embittered aristocrat in a time of social change. Popular leaders were writers of elegies— Solon the lawgiver of Athens composed on political and ethical subjects—and even Plato and Aristotle dabbled with the meter. A famous example of an elegiac couplet is the epitaph composed by Simonides of Ceos which Herodotus says

702-524: Is a graphic representation of its scansion : The form was felt by the ancients to contrast the rising action of the first verse with a falling quality in the second. The sentiment is summarized in a line from Ovid's Amores I.1.27 — Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat — "Let my work rise in six steps, fall back in five." The effect is illustrated by Friedrich Schiller 's couplet translated into English by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as: and by Alfred, Lord Tennyson , as: The elegiac couplet

756-592: Is by nature more spondaic. Thus the Latin hexameter took on characteristics of its own. The earliest example of hexameter in Latin poetry is the Annales of Ennius (now mostly lost except for about 600 lines), which established it as the standard for later Latin epics; it was written towards the end of Ennius's life about 172 BC. Ennius experimented with different kinds of lines, for example, lines with five dactyls: or lines consisting entirely of spondees: lines without

810-440: Is followed by a word starting with a vowel, the last vowel is usually elided (i.e. removed or pronounced quickly enough not to add to the length of the syllable), for example, Iun(ō) aeternum; poss(e) Ītalia; Teucrōr(um) āvertere, iamqu(e) eadem . Again, "h" is ignored and does not prevent elision: monstr(um) (h)orrendum . In Greek, short vowels elide freely, and the elision is shown by an apostrophe, for example in line 2 of

864-624: Is ignored in scansion, so that in the phrase et horret the syllable et remains short. qu counts as a single consonant, so that in the word aqua "water" the first syllable is short, not like the Italian acqua . In certain words like Iuppiter , Iovem , iam , iussit , and iēcit , i is a consonant, pronounced like the English y, so Iup-pi-ter has three syllables and iē-cit "he threw" has two. But in I-ū-lus ,

918-495: Is known as a strong or masculine caesura. When the 3rd foot is a dactyl, the caesura can come after the second syllable of the 3rd foot; this is known as a weak or feminine caesura. It is more common in Greek than in Latin. An example is the first line of Homer's Odyssey : In Latin (but not in Greek, as the above example shows), whenever a feminine caesura is used in the 3rd foot, it is usually accompanied by masculine caesuras in

972-487: Is presumed to be the oldest Greek form of epodic poetry (a form where a later verse is sung in response or comment to a previous one). Scholars, who even in the past did not know who created it, theorize the form was originally used in Ionian dirges , with the name "elegy" derived from the Greek ε, λεγε ε, λεγε —"Woe, cry woe, cry!" Hence, the form was used initially for funeral songs, typically accompanied by an aulos ,

1026-404: Is the first line of Virgil's Aeneid : The scansion is generally marked as follows, by placing long and short marks above the central vowel of each syllable: (Spaces mark syllable breaks) In dactylic verse, short syllables always come in pairs, so words such as mīlitēs "soldiers" or facilius "more easily" cannot be used in a hexameter. In Latin, when a word ends in a vowel or -m and

1080-456: Is usually a dactyl (around 95% of the lines in Homer). The sixth foot can be filled by either a trochee (a long then short syllable) or a spondee. Thus the dactylic line most normally is scanned as follows: (Here "–" = a long syllable , "u" = a short syllable, " u u " = either one long or two shorts, and "x" = an anceps syllable, which can be long or short.) An example of this in Latin

1134-453: The Aeneid is a classic example: In Latin, lines were arranged so that the metrically long syllables—those occurring at the beginning of a foot—often avoided the natural stress of a word. In the earlier feet of a line, meter and stress were expected to clash, while in the last two feet they were expected to coincide, as in prímus ab/ óris above. The coincidence of word accent and meter in

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1188-516: The Iliad : ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε ( hḕ murí᾽ Akhaioîs álge᾽ éthēke ) "which caused countless sufferings for the Achaeans". However, a long vowel is not elided: Πηληϊά δεω Ἀχιλῆος ( Pēlēïá deō Akhilêos ). This feature is sometimes imitated in Latin for special effect, for example, fēmine ō u lulātu "with womanly wailing" ( Aen . 9.477). When a vowel is elided, it does not count in

1242-518: The Tristia , Ovid wrote another collection of elegiac epistles on his exile, the Epistulae ex Ponto , as well as a 642-line curse poem called Ibis , directed against the unnamed enemy who had apparently caused his downfall. He spent several years in the outpost of Tomis and died in AD 17 or 18 without ever returning to Rome. The Tristia was once viewed unfavorably in Ovid's oeuvre but has become

1296-422: The "error" is never made clear, although some speculate it may have had something to do with Ovid's overhearing (or rather discovery) of the adulterous nature of Augustus' daughter, Julia . He defends his work and his life with equal vigor, appealing to the many poets who had written on the same themes as he—among them Anacreon , Sappho , Catullus and even Homer . The plea was unsuccessful; Ovid would live out

1350-531: The 2nd and 4th feet also: Sometimes a line is found without a 3rd foot caesura, such as the following. In this case the 2nd and 4th foot caesuras are obligatory: The hexameter was first used by early Greek poets of the oral tradition, and the most complete extant examples of their works are the Iliad and the Odyssey , which influenced the authors of all later classical epics that survive today. Early epic poetry

1404-677: The Renaissance, more skilled writers interested in the revival of Roman culture attempted to recapture the spirit of the Augustan writers. The Dutch Latinist Johannes Secundus , for example, included Catullus-inspired love elegies in his Liber Basiorum , while the English poet John Milton wrote several lengthy elegies throughout his career. This trend continued down through the Recent Latin writers, whose close study of their Augustan counterparts reflects their general attempts to apply

1458-408: The blacksmith sons of Vulcan forged Aeneas' shield. The five spondees and the word accents cutting across the verse rhythm give an impression of huge effort: A slightly different effect is found in the following line (3.658), describing the terrifying one-eyed giant Polyphemus, blinded by Ulysses . Here again there are five spondees but there are also three elisions, which cause the word accent of all

1512-470: The cultural and literary forms of the ancient world to contemporary themes. Dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, u for a short, and u u for a position that may be

1566-480: The departing book against the dangers of its destination, was probably written last. The second book consists of a single 578-line poem. It takes the form of a plea to Augustus to end the unhappy exile brought about by his carmen et error (poem and error). The poem which had angered the Emperor was apparently Ovid's Ars Amatoria , a light-hearted instruction manual on how to pick up women; the nature of

1620-579: The earlier Catullus—it is possible to trace specific characteristics and evolutionary patterns in the Roman form of the verse: Although no classical poet wrote collections of love elegies after Ovid, the verse retained its popularity as a vehicle for popular occasional poetry . Elegiac verses appear, for example, in Petronius ' Satyricon , and Martial 's Epigrams uses it for many witty stand-alone couplets and for longer pieces. The trend continues through

1674-648: The educated classes for gravestone epitaphs; many such epitaphs can be found in European cathedrals. De tribus puellis is an example of a Latin fabliau , a genre of comedy which employed elegiac couplets in imitation of Ovid. The medieval theorist John of Garland wrote that "all comedy is elegy, but the reverse is not true." Medieval Latin had a developed comedic genre known as elegiac comedy . Sometimes narrative, sometimes dramatic , it deviated from ancient practice because, as Ian Thompson writes, "no ancient drama would ever have been written in elegiacs." With

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1728-495: The exile elegies a fresh look." A number of scholars have since viewed the collection favorably. It is listed among Ovid's major works by author David Malouf and scholar Matthew Woodcock. In Matthew Bunson 's Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire , it is called "a powerful plea for justice." Elegiac couplets Each couplet consists of a dactylic hexameter verse followed by a dactylic pentameter verse. The following

1782-418: The flute girl Nanno , and though fragmentary today, his poetry was clearly influential in the later Roman development of the form. Propertius , to cite one example, notes Plus in amore valet Mimnermi versus Homero —"The verse of Mimnermus is stronger in love than Homer ". The form continued to be popular throughout the Greek period and treated a number of different themes. Tyrtaeus composed elegies on

1836-452: The forms of words to allow them to fit the hexameter, typically by using a dialectal form: ptolis is an epic form used instead of the Attic polis as necessary for the meter. Proper names sometimes take forms to fit the meter, for example Pouludamas instead of the metrically unviable Poludamas . Some lines require a knowledge of the digamma for their scansion, e.g. Iliad 1.108: Here

1890-477: The last two feet could be achieved by restricting the last word to one of two or three syllables. Most lines (about 85% in Virgil) have a caesura or word division after the first syllable of the 3rd foot, as above ca/nō . This is known as a strong or masculine caesura. Because of the penultimate accent in Latin, this ensures that the word accent and meter will not coincide in the 3rd foot. But in those lines with

1944-445: The later rules of hexameter composition have their origins in the methods and practices of Homer. The hexameter came into Latin as an adaptation from Greek long after the practice of singing the epics had faded. Consequentially, the properties of the meter were learned as specific rules rather than as a natural result of musical expression. Also, because the Latin language generally has a higher proportion of long syllables than Greek, it

1998-455: The line into two parts. Homer employs a feminine caesura more commonly than later writers. An example occurs in Iliad 1.5: Homer's hexameters contain a higher proportion of dactyls than later hexameter poetry. They are also characterised by a laxer following of verse principles than later epicists almost invariably adhered to. For example, Homer allows spondaic fifth feet (albeit not often), whereas many later authors do not. Homer also altered

2052-488: The mid-to-late first century BCE who are most commonly associated with the distinctive Roman form of the elegiac couplet. Catullus, the first of these, is an invaluable link between the Alexandrine school and the subsequent elegies of Tibullus , Propertius and Ovid . He shows a familiarity with the usual Alexandrine style of terse epigram and a wealth of mythological learning, as in his 66th poem, Coma Berenices ,

2106-441: The name of Aeneas's son, I is a vowel and forms a separate syllable. Tro-i-us "Trojan" has three syllables, but Tro-iae "of Troy" has two. In some editions of Latin texts the consonant v is written as u , in which case u is also often consonantal. This can sometimes cause ambiguity; e.g., in the word uoluit (= vol-vit ) "he rolls" the second u is a consonant, but in uoluit (= vo-lu-it ) "he wanted"

2160-523: The poets Lucilius , Horace , Persius , and Juvenal . The hexameter continued to be used in Christian times, for example in the Carmen paschale of the 5th-century Irish poet Sedulius and Bernard of Cluny 's 12th-century satire De contemptu mundi among many others. Hexameters also form part of elegiac poetry in both languages, the elegiac couplet being a dactylic hexameter line paired with

2214-1078: The remainder of his years in exile among the Thracian Getae . The last three books of the Tristia grow grimmer as their author ages, heavy with the knowledge that he will never return to his home. At one point he even composes his epitaph : I who lie here, sweet Ovid, poet of tender passions,     fell victim to my own sharp wit. Passer-by, if you've ever been in love, don't grudge me     the traditional prayer: 'May Ovid's bones lie soft!' The last poem of book 5 addresses Ovid's wife, praising her loyalty throughout his years of exile and wishing that she be remembered for as long as his books are read. The number of poems in Tristia differs slightly in different editions. For example, in Hall's 1995 Teubner edition, poems 1.5, 1.9, 3.4, 4.4, 5.2 and 5.7 are each split into two separate poems, which in most manuscripts each appear to be

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2268-557: The remainder of the empire; short elegies appear in Apuleius 's story of Cupid and Psyche and in the minor writings of Ausonius . After the fall of the empire, one writer who produced elegiac verse was Maximianus . Various Christian writers also adopted the form; Venantius Fortunatus wrote some of his hymns in the meter, while later Alcuin and the Venerable Bede dabbled in the verse. The form also remained popular among

2322-492: The rules of the meter and approached it in a highly rhetorical way, looking for effects that can be exploited in skilled recitation. For example, the following line from the Aeneid (8.596) describes the movement and sound of galloping horses: This line is made up of five dactyls and a closing spondee, an unusual rhythmic arrangement that imitates the described action. A different effect is found in 8.452, where Virgil describes how

2376-420: The scansion; so for the purposes of scansion, Iu-n(o) ae-ter-num has four syllables. Almost every hexameter has a word break, known as a caesura / s ɪ ˈ z j ʊ ə r ə / , in the middle of the 3rd foot, sometimes (but not always) coinciding with a break in sense. In most cases (85% of lines in Virgil) this comes after the first syllable of the 3rd foot, as in ca/no in the above example. This

2430-446: The second u is a vowel. A hexameter line can be divided into six feet (Greek ἕξ hex = "six"). In strict dactylic hexameter, each foot would be a dactyl (a long and two short syllables, i.e. – u u), but classical meter allows for the substitution of a spondee (two long syllables, i.e. – –) in place of a dactyl in most positions. Specifically, the first four feet can either be dactyls or spondees more or less freely. The fifth foot

2484-466: The singular medium for short epigrams . The founder of this school was Philitas of Cos . He was eclipsed only by the school's most admired exponent, Callimachus ; their learned character and intricate art would have a heavy influence on the Romans. Like many Greek forms, elegy was adapted by the Romans for their own literature. The fragments of Ennius contain a few couplets, but it is the elegists of

2538-552: The subject of scholarly interest in recent years. The first of the five books was written during Ovid's journey into exile. It addresses his grieving wife, his friends — both the faithful and the false — and his past works, especially the Metamorphoses . Ovid describes his arduous travel to the furthest edge of the empire, giving him a chance to draw parallels with the exiles of Aeneas and Odysseus (Ulysses) and excuse his work's failings. The introductory poem, which cautions

2592-449: The terms are syllaba longa and syllaba brevis . The process of deciding which syllables are long and which are short is known as scansion. A syllable is long if it contains a long vowel or a diphthong: Ae-nē-ās , au-rō . It is also long (with certain exceptions) if it has a short vowel followed by two consonants, even if these are in different words: con - dunt , et ter rīs , tot vol -ve-re . In this case

2646-523: The word ἔπος ( epos ) was originally ϝέπος ( wepos ) in Ionian; the digamma , later lost, lengthened the last syllable of the preceding εἶπας ( eipas ) and removed the apparent defect in the meter. A digamma also saved the hiatus in the third foot. This example demonstrates the oral tradition of the Homeric epics that flourished before they were written down sometime in the 7th century BC. Most of

2700-523: The words but ingens to coincide with the beginning of each foot: A succession of long syllables in some lines indicates slow movement, as in the following example where Aeneas and his companion the Sibyl (a priestess of Apollo) were entering the darkness of the world of the dead: The following example ( Aeneid 2.9) describes how Aeneas is reluctant to begin his narrative, since it is already past midnight. The feminine caesura after suadentque without

2754-399: Was also accompanied by music, and pitch changes associated with the accented Greek must have highlighted the melody, though the exact mechanism is still a topic of discussion. The first line of Homer's Iliad provides an example: Dividing the line into metrical units or feet it can be scanned as follows: This line also includes a masculine caesura after θεά , a break that separates

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2808-546: Was also regarded by the ancients as a great elegist, but, except for a few lines, his work has been lost. The form reached its zenith with the collections of Tibullus and Propertius and several collections of Ovid (the Amores , Ars Amatoria , Heroides , Tristia , and Epistulae ex Ponto ). The vogue of elegy during this time is seen in the so-called 3rd and 4th books of Tibullus. Many poems in these books were clearly not written by Tibullus but by others, perhaps part of

2862-764: Was consequently considered to be the grand style of Western classical poetry. Some well known examples of its use are Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey , Apollonius of Rhodes 's Argonautica , Virgil 's Aeneid , Ovid 's Metamorphoses , Lucan 's Pharsalia (an epic on Caesar's civil war ), Valerius Flaccus 's Argonautica , and Statius 's Thebaid . However, hexameters had a wide use outside of epic. Greek works in hexameters include Hesiod 's Works and Days and Theogony , Theocritus 's Idylls , and Callimachus 's hymns. In Latin famous works include Lucretius 's philosophical De rerum natura , Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics , book 10 of Columella 's manual on agriculture, as well as Latin satirical poems by

2916-525: Was inscribed on a stone to commemorate those who died at the battle of Thermopylae in 490 BC: Cicero translates it as follows ( Tusc. Disp. 1.42.101), also using an elegiac couplet: By the Hellenistic period , the Library of Alexandria made elegy its favorite and most highly developed form. They preferred the briefer style associated with elegy in contrast to the lengthier epic forms, and made it

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